ASIAN DECORATION IDEAS

The Staircase

How could Lizzy Enders's father abandon her at a girls school run by nuns? She's surrounded by Catholics--but she's Methodist! Shunned by the other boarders, Lizzy befriends a wandering carpenter named Jose, who with just three tools--and unflagging faith--builds an elaborate spiral staircase in the new chapel in mere weeks. When he disappears without a trace, Lizzy realizes that the way she sees things is not always the way they are.
Inspired by the legend of the "miraculous" staircase in the Chapel of Loretto in Santa Fe, Ann Rinaldi skillfully blends the mystery surrounding the staircase's builder with the daily trials of a spunky thirteen-year-old girl growing up in the 1870s.

"'This one is wise,' he said.' This one has an old spirit. She has been among us before.'" Though the Arapaho Indian on the trail praised her old spirit, 14-year-old Lizzy Enders feels anything but wise. Within only a few days, she has lost her mother to the fever, been left by her widowed father at a convent, and thrust into the strange world of the Academy of Our Lady of Light in 1870s Santa Fe. Born a Methodist, Lizzy just can't comprehend Catholicism: "All this talk of blood and martyrdom and eating flesh and agony. It was just all too much, is all." In an attempt to alleviate her misery, Lizzy befriends an unemployed elderly carpenter and suggests he be hired to build the missing staircase for the convent's new chapel. The other girls at the academy are furious, since they have been praying for a miracle to complete the stairs, not an old beggar. Can she convince them that this aged man, with his real tools, is better than an ephemeral miracle? What Lizzy has to discover for herself is that sometimes miracles come disguised in nun's habits... or carpenter's sandals.
Based on a legend of a real chapel stairway in Santa Fe, The Staircase is a lively historical fiction that successfully merges myth, religion, and old-fashioned pioneer sensibility. Lizzy's need to make order of her chaotic world and define the unknown are timeless teen traits, making The Staircase a historical novel with real relevance for today's adolescent. (Ages 12 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

Recontruction of the Antinoeion with the two temples, the obelisk of Antinous in the center and the two telamones of Antinous standing on plinths at both sides of the entrance to the sanctum of the "temenos" (temple).
The two temples are enclosed, except in the front part by a fence of plants and trees. The rest of the floor of the sanctuary was covered by mosaic. The area of the wide exedra is separated from the area where the two temples stand by a water canal interrupted in the central part to give access to the entrance to the tomb. Water, a reminder of the Nile played an important role in Roman complexes dedicated to Isis or Serapes.
The two temples in the Antinoeion were of the type: Prostil (with columns only in its front), tetrastil (with four columns in front of the pronaos, the portico, with a naos or cella behind it, the main room of the temple). The temples stood on a podium, a characteristic of Etruscan and Roman temples and not of Greek ones, with a staircase between the two protruding front parts of the podium.
It is not known to whom were this temples dedicated to, maybe to two hypostatised Antinous, or maybe to the divine couple of the Roman-Egyptian Pantheon, Osiris and Isis.
One of the two temples, in ionic style, had a classical triangular pediment, the other one built in an eclectically Roman-Egyptian style could have been crowned by a circular one.
The use of half arch pediments was common in roman temples dedicated to Egyptian divinities, there are many examples of this in coins and mosaics, it was an architectonical form belonging to the Alexandrine tradition. The curved pediment and roof symbolised in Egypt the celestial vault
This is an hypothesis, it is also possible that both temples were covered with the classical triangular roofs of Greco-Roman temples.
The co-existence of buildings of Classical and Egyptian style in the Antinoeion is based in the presence, in the sanctuary of Isis in the Roman Campo Marzio of two temples belonging to these two different architectonical typologies.
In the middle of the sanctuary, between the two temples a concrete basement has been found. It measures 3x3 m. Dr. Mari the archaeologist who discovered the Antinoeion , suggests that the Barberini obelisk, dedicated to Antinous could have stood on this basement.
The augural side of the obelisk, the one dedicated to emperor Hadrian and to his wife Sabina, was possibly placed facing the entrance, towards the Cento Camerelle, the other three faces, dedicated to Osiris-Antinous, facing the two temples and the exedra.
One of the sides of the obelisk states: “Antinous who is buried here inside of the garden owned by the Prince of Rome”. (Translation by J.C. Garnier). This makes plausible the location of the obelisk in the sanctuary of Antinous.
The two Telamoni, statues of Antinous as Osiris placed on the two plinths in the middle of the Exedra, in front of the possible location of the tomb of Antinous. The Telamoni (telamones) are now kept in the Vatican Museums, in the Museo Pio Clementino. They measure 3,35m from the base to the top of the capitals in form of lotus flowers.
They wear the typical Egyptian skirt, the shendit and the headdress, the nemes, with the royal uraeus on the front, something strange for this was characteristic of the Pharaohs.


The reconstruction of the complex has been done by Stefano Pracchia in collaboration with the Societa Land s.r.l. and the 3d artist Paolo Belardinelli, a commission of Dr.
Anna Maria Reggiani who is the Direttore Generale per i Beni Archeologici del Ministero per I Beni e le Attivitta Culturali.
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"Antinous' tomb" by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti:
"In the year 130 CE, while Hadrian and his retinue visited Egypt and were sailing on the Nile, Antinous fell from the boat and was found dead. What happened and why it happened was, and still is, a mystery. Spartianus and Cassius Dio gave some very incredible explanation for his death, and I don’t believe any of their hypothesis. The only real fact about it, was that his death hit very deeply Hadrian. However he was an Emperor and a jealous guardian of the imperial dignity and for this reason I can’t believe Svetonius when he tells that Hadrian wept his lover with “feminine mourning wails”. At those times women not only wept but did it with very high and shrill moans while they scratched their cheeks and their breasts until they bled. Hadrian, an emperor would never do such scenes. Of course he must have suffered very much but he went on with his tour as if nothing had happened and did not came back to Rome until the 134 CE.
Of course before leaving the place where his beloved boy had died he transformed the village, Besa, near which the young man had lost his life in a town called Antinoopolis, and built a beautiful temple dedicated to him, a temple for Antinous, a new god, as he had just been declared by the Egyptians. As a matter of fact this people belie

Caesarea is located on the Mediterranean coast, about midway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Archeological excavations during the 1950s and 1960s uncovered remains from many periods, in particular, a complex of fortifications of the Crusader city and the Roman theater.

During the past 20 years, major excavations conducted by numerous expeditions from Israel and abroad have exposed impressive reminders of the forgotten grandeur of both the Roman and the Crusader cities.
The Roman City

Founded by King Herod in the first century BCE on the site of a Phoenician and Greek trade post known as Straton’s Tower, Caesarea was named for Herod’s Roman patron, Augustus Caesar. This city was described in detail by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius. (Antiquities XV. 331 ff; War I, 408 ff) It was a walled city, with the largest harbor on the eastern Mediterranean coast, named Sebastos, the Greek name of the emperor Augustus.

The temple of the city, dedicated to Augustus Caesar, was built on a high podium facing the harbor. A broad flight of steps led from the pier to the temple. Public buildings and elaborate entertainment facilities in the imperial tradition were erected. King Herod’s palace was in the southern part of the city.

In the year 6 CE, Caesarea became the seat of the Roman procurators of Provincia Judaea and headquarters of the 10th Roman Legion. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the city expanded and became one of most important in the eastern part of the Roman Empire, classified as the "Metropolis of the Province of Syria Palaestina,"

Caesarea played an important role in early Christian history. Here the baptism of the Roman officer Cornelius took place; (Acts 10:1-5, 25-28) from here Paul set sail for his journeys in the eastern Mediterranean; and here he was taken prisoner and sent to Rome for trial. (Acts 23:23-24)

The palace was built on a rock promontory jutting out into the sea, in the southern part of the Roman city. The excavations revealed a large architectural complex, measuring 110 x 60 m., with a decorative pool, surrounded by porticoes. This elegant structure in its unique location was identified as Herod’s palace. (Antiquitites, XV, 332) The palace was in use throughout the Roman period, as attested to by two columns with Greek and Latin dedicatory inscriptions naming governors of the province of Judea.

The theater is located in the very south of the city. It was commissioned by King Herod and is the earliest of the Roman entertainment facilities built in his kingdom. The theater faces the sea and has thousands of seats resting on a semi-circular structure of vaults. The semi-circular floor of the orchestra, first paved in painted plaster, was later paved with marble.

In the excavated theater a stone was found, bearing parts of an inscription mentioning Pontius Pilate, Procurator of Judea, and the Tiberium (the edifice in honor of the Emperor Tiberius) which he built.

The amphitheater, on the city’s southern shore, was also mentioned by Josephus Flavius. It was north-south oriented and measured 64 x 31 m. Its eastern and rounded southern side are well preserved; the western side was largely destroyed by the sea. A 1.05 m-high wall surrounded an arena, covered with crushed, beaten chalk. When first built in the Herodian period, it seated about 8,000 spectators; in the first century CE seating areas were added, increasing its capacity to 15,000. The dimensions, shape and installations indicate that this amphitheater was used for racing horses and chariots and was, in fact, a hippodrome. An inscription found here reads Morismus [the] charioteer. During the second century, the amphitheater was rebuilt and adapted for use as a more standard type of amphitheater.

The Aqueduct, which provided an abundant supply of water, was built in the Herodian period; it was later repaired and enlarged to a double channel when the city grew. The upper aqueduct begins at the springs located some nine kilometers northeast of Caesarea, at the foot of Mt. Carmel. It was constructed with considerable engineering know-how, ensuring the flow of water, by gravity, from the springs to the city. In some portions, the aqueduct was supported by rows of arches, then it crossed the kurkar ridge along the coast via a tunnel. Entering the city from the north, the water flowed through a network of pipes to collecting pools and fountains throughout the city. Many inscriptions in the aqueduct ascribe responsibility for its maintenance to the Second and Tenth Legions.
Byzantine Caesarea

During this period, Caesarea became an important Christian center. The Church Father Origen founded a Christian academy in the city, which included a library of 30,000 manuscripts. At the beginning of the 4th century, the theologian Eusebius, who served as Bishop of Caesarea, composed here his monumental Historia Ecclesiastica on the beginnings of Christianity and the Onomasticon, a comprehensive geographical-historical study of the Hol

The Staircase, based on the real legend of the miraculous stairway at the Sisters of Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico is an inspirational, life-affirming drama of hope and faith. Mother Madalyn s (Barbara Hershey) last wish is that her beloved chapel be completed. However when local carpenters built the chapel, they neglected to erect stairs up to the choir loft, and due to the chapel s construction, adding a staircase is now impossible. The arrival of Joad (William Petersen), may be the answer to Mother Madalyn s prayers. Run Time: 95 minutes Format: 1 disk, DVDRating: Not ratedPublisher: Ignatius Press